Capacity building

“ The site should be large enough for the eventual group of buildings, the building should be easily capable of extension with the least cost, and the same forethought should govern the lay-out of the machinery. ”

“ The necessity of having a plan prepared by some one who understands the principles and requirements of simple building construction, before undertaking the erection of any building, cannot be too strongly emphasised. This great need, which is often overlooked by the settler, cannot be economically dispensed with. ”

“ This is always assuming that the speculative buildings shall be utilized at a normal return on the capital invested, which is begging the whole question. It is the business of building operators to know what class of people can be attracted to the new areas, and their success or failure in moving population to occupy the new houses, and in attracting various classes of people, determines the scale of values. ”

“ The school-room, laboratory, or college class-room could be used at midnight, it is true, but not conveniently; and as students increase, buildings must be added. The same is true of any industry. We cannot conveniently increase the business of a lumber-yard without a larger yard-space, or of a factory without a larger floor-space. But the added space may be gotten by spreading horizontally or piling up perpendicularly. A ten-story building on an acre lot represents ten acres of floor-space. Putting up higher buildings is an expansion in area by the more intensive utilization of the land. ”

“ Increments.—It is hardly to be expected that any very uniform plan of building can be rigidly adhered to; moral as well as physical difficulties may demand departure from regularity in the construction of the future increments of a town, particularly where the field to be occupied is extensive; but so long as the general principles are adhered to, and the new streets proceeded with, upon a general preconceived and authorized plan, all the needful objects may be attained ”

“ If, then, increased building accommodation and improved buildings are to be provided, the solution of the difficulty would appear to lie in a better arrangement of buildings and in the adoption of cheaper methods and materials of construction. ”

“ It is particularly important to arrange the buildings in such a manner as to cut down labor as much as possible. If there is any expectation of enlarging the capacity at some future time, this must also be borne in mind in the arrangement of the various buildings and yards. ”

“ In times of a strained economy and high cost of property maintenance, the business community may be hesitant to provide low-cost housing for the site.
Establishing the facility in a publicly owned building, such as a school, is a solution in many communities. ”

“ If, however, the building runs at a low return for ten years, the investment may prove a poor one, and the compromise of erecting one or two-stories of sufficient strength to carry later five or six, is sometimes the best solution. ”

“ A further illustration of the economy of open planning, leads into an extremely complicated discussion of the technique of architectural planning, dealing with the relationship of land value to the percentage of site area covered by building. It may be stated, however, that when the building covers too high a percentage of area, it inevitably becomes more complicated and more wasteful of space ”

“ The construction of factory buildings has been evolved into a science. Why cannot the same thing be done with the whole scheme of economic organization? Men no longer erect factory buildings according to personal whim or to the chance ideas of some budding architect. Instead they consult scientists in factory construction who have devoted years to the study and to the practical supervision of the detail of factory building. Can less be demanded of the community which hopes to build its economic life soundly and solidly? ”

“ The construction of each building has been studied with very great care, so as to secure the minimum amount of material, the least possible amount of work in construction or erection, and the means of arranging all the parts in separate packages capable each of being carried by two men; and the result is that each building is the cheapest and lightest that has yet been constructed in proportion to the area covered. ”

“ The reasons given for the slow rate of building are lack of money and the difficulty of getting hold of sites – for Corporation houses are not erected piecemeal but in ‘estates’, sometimes of hundreds of houses at a time. ”

“ Outlay on Farm Buildings—It would not be very satisfactory, perhaps, to attempt to lay down any rule as to the proportion of capital per acre which it is necessary to invest in buildings on any particular class of farm. The class of building, the material used, local circumstances, as well as the extent of the farm and the value of the land, all tend to disturb calculation. ”

“ In China and the East generally, be it remembered, the large population lives upon one plane. It has been left to [91] Europe and America to try the experiment of piling the city populations in heaps, of housing them in many-storeyed buildings, some of which (in America) are fifty times the height of a man.
The facilities for overcrowding which are afforded by big schemes of water-supply and sewerage are now well understood, and have caused the formation of 'Building Societies' throughout the country. ”

“ Only such team-work, perhaps, can organize the logistics of building production in such a way that extensive and ramified ventures are carried rapidly to completion, a desideratum of the first order in a boom period for skyscrapers that must be finished quickly in order to begin repaying their enormous cost. ”

“ In addition to these questions, involving the annual maintenance of the plant, the increase in the expense of the building above a certain point may prove poor management, by locking up capital for too long a time, and may tend to prevent the improvements in arrangement and construction which are necessary for the most advantageous manufacturing. ”

“ Oftentimes policies are taken out on buildings with the description so indefinitely worded that it becomes very difficult, where there are many buildings, to know just what is covered by any particular policy. Where policies are taken out covering new equipment as it is purchased, and at some future time the equipment is moved from building to building, the problem of allocating the policy with the property covered by it becomes particularly difficult. ”

“ The public buildings now in process of construction, numbering 80, involving constant supervision, are all the building projects which the Government ought to have on hand at one time, unless a very palpable necessity exists for an increase in the number. ”

“ Arrangement of farm buildings—A great deal of labour is saved by an economical arrangement of the various compartments of a building. The various parts should be so compacted that operations dependent on each other, or following in consecutive order, should be performed in immediate proximity; and the saving of all unnecessary labour, as well as the prompt and rapid execution of work, ought always to be kept prominently in view. ”

“ A public building would be necessary for a storehouse, in which rooms for meetings of various kinds should be provided, also such shelter as might be necessary for assembling and storage of products for shipment.
The expense of public buildings and other utilities could be paid for out of the increased value that they bring to the land. The company should have a nursery to provide fruit tree, etc., the growth of which, with the increase of population would make the farms, when paid for, worth far more than their cost. ”

“ When, five years ago, I took the secretarial control of the Money Order department, the building appropriated thereto was fully occupied, and negotiations were in progress for purchasing land to extend the accommodations. At present, notwithstanding an increase of business to the amount of one-third, there is such ample room that no extension is likely to be required for many years to come. ”

“ Would the increased demand for construction lead immediately to an increase in demand for building labor sufficiently great to give employment to workmen who would not be needed on the old construction because of the increase in individual output? ”

“ Men worked five days a week on three-hour shifts in the factories, but longer hours and more pay went to the builders, to the men who had to manually control the building construction machinery, for law forbade the building of offices on the mass production scheme, since that meant an unvaried, monotonous city. ”

“ The time element in this definition eliminates such buildings as a factory in a residence district, or a saloon in a business location, which while yielding a large rent injures the surrounding property. There are cases in rapidly changing sections where the most suitable building is one some years in advance of the time, since the utility of the building yielding the highest present rent will in a few years disappear, necessitating its destruction or reconstruction. ”

“ It is interesting, therefore, to find it is that which experience has led practical men to suggest as a remedy for the disorders of one of the most important of national industries, that of building. The question before the Committee of employers and workmen, which issued last August a Report upon the Building Trade, was "Scientific Management and the Reduction of Costs." ”

“ The workingman himself developed the extensive system of building loan societies, for the sole purpose of financing his own home. In this connection one may also mention the growth of large industries in the manufacture of building materials. ”

“ Probably if a larger proportion of the capital required for land and building—say 85 per cent. instead of 66 per cent.—were lent to Public Utility Societies, they would spring up all over the country. A Public Utility Society is a group of people who band themselves together to build houses, undertaking to receive not more than 5 per cent. interest on their money. They build, and then let, and give the tenants a real inducement to look after the property well in the form of a bonus if the cost of repairs is low, and if the houses are well let. These Societies are making headway. ”

“ Average repairs vary from one-half of 1% of the value of the building per annum in the case of the highest type of fireproof buildings, 1% for ordinary mercantile buildings, 2% for older property or that of cheaper construction, 3% to 4% for old tenements, and so on up in proportion to the age, character of construction, and lack of care of the buildings. ”

“ How far the enormously increased land value can be counterbalanced by building on a large scale, but with inevitably more expensive material, is a question to be carefully considered. But the rental must be calculated on a business basis unless the problem is solved by a frank reversion to charity. ”

“ With respect to the building associations for the improvement of the houses of the poor, their efforts, as it seems to me, will be most advantageously directed, not in building houses, but in buying and preparing ground, and letting it out to the individual builder upon conditions compelling the desired structural arrangements. ”

“ In both these industries the workers demanded an adequate voice in the control of their own destiny, and in both it was opposed. The builders were leading the way by forming Building Guilds which accepted housing contracts running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. ”

“ When buildings are erected on the outskirts of a city where the. conversion from agricultural land to building land is taking place, the character of the buildings will at first determine the value of the land. Such districts afford highly competitive sites, where the only difference between lots, barring topography, is in transportation facilities, so that building operators can control values in the new territory by their scale of development, as in South Brooklyn. ”

“ For example, in the development of a residential district, when it is not controlled in advance by building restrictions, the early stages of growth are usually marked by wide variations in the type and value of buildings constructed. But, in the process of development, a uniform cost type of structure tends to dominate, gradually eliminating all other types that vary widely from the norm, so that it is customary to find a considerable degree of economic homogeneity in all established residential districts. ”

“ First, educational, by placing before the interested public an aggregation of building intelligence in the form of exhibits of the actual materials, appliances, and inventions employed in modern construction. Second, that in the fact of such centralization of materials, a vast amount of time is saved to the public concerned in building interests. For those who desire to build, information is not only gained regarding a large variety of improvements, but obtained in a minimum quantity of time. ”

“ The economies would increase, and also the independence of the occupants, with the increase of numbers within certain limits. While the edifice might be of equal size for rich or poor, the separate domiciles would naturally be smaller and more numerous where the means of the proprietors were less. In the same building the various domiciles would differ in value according to situation and size, and thus would suit persons of different means. Not less than one hundred nor more than four hundred families may be assumed for illustration as probable limits of number. ”

“ The fact that it is a system in operation, not only with a capacity to supply the city but actually supplying many buildings, in the city—not 120only with a capacity to earn but actually earning—make it true that the 'fair and equitable value' is something in excess of the cost of reproduction. ”